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WASHINGTON — Internal emails among senior U.S. military officers indicate that no sailors
watched Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea from the USS Carl Vinson and traditional Islamic burial
procedures were followed.

The emails, released by the Defense Department yesterday after a Freedom of Information Act
request by the Associated Press, are heavily blacked out but are the first public disclosure of
government information about the al-Qaida leader’s burial.

Bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011, by a Navy SEAL team at his compound in Abbottabad,
Pakistan.

One email sent on May 2 by a senior Navy officer briefly describes how bin Laden’s body was
washed, wrapped in a white sheet and then placed in a weighted bag.

According to another message, only a small group of the ship’s leadership was informed of the
burial.

Recipients of the email included Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and Gen. James Mattis, the top officer at U.S. Central Command.

Earlier, Charles Gaouette, then deputy commander of the Navy’s 5th Fleet, used code words to
discuss whether the helicopters carrying the SEALs and bin Laden’s body had arrived.

“Any news on the package for us?” he asked Rear Adm. Samuel Perez, commander of the carrier
strike group that included the Vinson.

In a response to separate requests from the AP for information about the mission, the Defense
Department said in March that it could locate no photographs or video taken during the raid or
showing bin Laden’s body. The Pentagon also said it could not find a death certificate, autopsy
report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden.